


let me be the one to save you

by tamquams



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Ronan Compliant Language, gansey only appears over the phone, ronan and adam saving each other is my shit, takes place during TRK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamquams/pseuds/tamquams
Summary: “Parrish—?” said Ronan.Adam collapsed.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 17
Kudos: 170





	let me be the one to save you

**Author's Note:**

> Earlier today (or yesterday, I suppose), Maggie Stiefvater tweeted several out-of-context scenes that were cut from the final version of the Raven King, including one that said simply, 
> 
> _“Parrish—?” said Ronan._
> 
> _Adam collapsed._
> 
> Without context, my brain took it and ran with it. This is the end result. Takes place immediately after Adam saves Ronan and Opal from the acid pool in Cabeswater, but before they arrive at the hospital. Hope you enjoy.

“Are you — kid, look at me — are you okay?” Ronan’s voice was coming in broken fragments, strained and hoarse from the last few minutes. He cleared his throat, gripped the Orphan Girl’s shoulders a little tighter. “Are you okay?”

The girl just blinked up at him, wide-eyed and afraid, for several moments before wrenching herself out of his grasp. He moved to grab her again but she dodged away from him, coming once more to Adam’s side and wrapping a small arm around his waist. His pupils were still just black pinpricks in his ocean eyes, and his movements were sloppy and uncoordinated. 

“I’m fine,” he said to her, voice slurred slightly. Ronan’s heart was beating out of his chest. “Help Ronan.” The girl shot a look at Ronan, deemed him in better shape than Adam, and then tightened her grip on the shorter boy.

“Jesus, Parrish,” Ronan said, finally approaching him and sliding an arm under his shoulder. Adam moved to pull away, but he was so weak that the effort was just pathetic. “The hell did you _do_?”

Adam huffed indignantly but allowed himself to be held up by Ronan and the Orphan Girl. “I saved your ass,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand against one eye like a child. It didn’t seem to help; he groaned in frustration. “Damn it.”

The Orphan Girl’s voice was sharp and demanding from his other side. “Out!” she snapped at Ronan, her chin tilted fiercely. “We need to get him out!”

Well, hell. Ronan didn’t have to be told twice. He began to haul Adam forward, not unkindly, and Adam took several faltering steps pressed against his side before pushing him away slightly — not far enough for their bodies to stop touching, but just enough distance to make a point.

“Stop,” he said, one hand still pressed against Ronan’s chest. “I’m slowing you down, and it’s dangerous to be in here too long. Just keep going, and I’ll meet you two at the car.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ronan squeezed Adam’s wrist, firm but gentle. “We’re not fucking leaving you. Just let me help.”

“No.” Adam pushed him away harder, but Ronan did not relinquish his hold on him. Adam’s pupils were still too small, his body too clumsy, to make it out of there alive without Ronan’s help. And there was no way in _hell_ Ronan was leaving him there to die.

“Jesus _fuck_ , Parrish, I’ll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here if I have to,” growled Ronan, grinding his teeth to keep from squeezing Adam’s wrist too hard — he refused to leave a bruise. 

“You need to—” Adam sneered, but he was cut off by the Orphan Girl giving an exasperated shriek and running around behind him, shoving him forward as hard as she could. He stumbled and nearly fell, only remaining upright because of the way Ronan immediately wrapped an arm around him again and hauled him up. 

“ _Go!_ ” the Orphan Girl insisted, shoving them both this time. Ronan began to move again, and Adam allowed himself to be half-carried, although judging by the tension in his back and shoulders, he was quite reluctant about the entire situation. Ronan tried not to take personal offense.

Cabeswater seemed to stretch on for miles longer than it normally did. Every time Ronan was sure they were near the edge of the treeline, he took a few steps and met nothing but more trees, more darkness, more fear. Adam was doing his best to carry his own weight, but something was still wrong with him; he couldn’t lift his feet as high as he should, and so he was tripping on every rock, branch, or root in their path. He swore quietly every time Ronan had to bring a hand up to stop him from falling, and Ronan couldn’t even celebrate the beauty of Adam’s voice shaping the words _damn_ and _shit_ and _fuck_ because they needed to be out of there fucking _yesterday_.

“C’mon Parrish,” Ronan said encouragingly as Adam seemed to slow. “We’re almost there. Come on.” The Orphan Girl was on his other side, holding Adam’s hand in her own and setting an unforgiving pace for all three of them. Adam was definitely moving too slowly, and she kept pulling on his arm in frenzied jerks, her bottom lip trembling.

“I can’t,” Adam gasped, losing his balance again. Ronan caught him, again. They were face-to-face, Adam’s head tilted up and Ronan’s tilted down, and in the darkness, with his pupils small and face ashen, Adam looked truly terrifying. “Please just go.” His voice cracked on the last word.

Ronan’s eyes slid closed, and he breathed out once, brokenly, before snapping them open again. “You’ve never been a quitter before, Parrish,” he said quietly, his jaw set. “You’re not starting now.”

There was a second where Adam looked as if he might argue, but then he just furrowed his brows. “Okay then,” he said, huffing out a shaky breath that Ronan could feel on his bottom lip. “Let’s get out of here.”

Although still weak, Adam’s determination gave him a surge of power that allowed them to move another fifty yards without him hitting the ground. He seemed to really, truly be at his breaking point, though, by the time they finally saw it, a couple of yards ahead: the edge of the forest. A smile broke across Adam’s face, hopeful and open, and Ronan couldn’t stop himself from smiling as well. Opal, however, was not reassured — her pulling and yanking just grew more insistent, more urgent. There was a strange noise behind them and a strangled cry left her lips, her face full of terror, and finally Ronan couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Go ahead of us!” he yelled at her, nodding his head in the direction of the treeline. “Get outta here. Go!” She gave him a venomous look, shot a worried glance at Adam, and then turned around and darted through the trees. Ronan saw the moment she emerged into the night.

“We’re almost there,” he huffed after a second, and he felt more than saw Adam nod beside him. “You’re fine.” It was a question, but it wasn’t. Adam just nodded again.

Finally, blissfully, they pulled past the last trees and stepped into the open field where the Beemer was parked, gasping the fresh night air into their lungs desperately. Ronan, in an act of true giddiness at having gotten everyone out of Cabeswater alive, pulled Adam in for a savage hug. Adam only hesitated for a moment before reciprocating, patting Ronan on the back twice and pressing his forehead against the taller boy’s t-shirt.

They broke apart several moments too late, both breathing a little heavier than the situation might entail, and then Adam was stepping backward, grinning broadly. He blinked a couple of times. “Let’s get outta here,” he said, a small waver in his voice. He blinked again. “We gotta talk to Gansey.” Blinked again. He was still panting. Ronan raised an eyebrow.

“Parrish—?” said Ronan.

Adam collapsed.

The next few seconds seemed to move in slow motion — Adam crumpling to the ground, the Orphan Girl launching herself out of the Beemer’s backseat with a helpless wail, Ronan’s body dropping to its knees beside Adam before Ronan’s brain was even processing what was going on. Without thinking, he placed two fingers to Adam’s neck and felt for a pulse. For one sickening second, there was nothing, but then he adjusted the position of his fingers and felt it. It was slow and a bit weak, but it was there. 

“We gotta get him — we gotta — we need to move him,” Ronan gasped, and the Orphan Girl nodded and ran one hand over Adam’s wrist before moving away to give Ronan more room. Ronan braced himself, clenched his jaw, and then scooped Adam’s limp form up in his arms.

His first thought was _Oh, Adam’s dead weight is heavier than I expected_. His second thought was _He would really, really hate this._ His third thought was _please don’t die please don’t die please don’t die._ Ronan grunted as he carried Adam to the Beemer, where he lay him down very gently in the backseat and then slumped against the door. He needed a plan. He needed a plan. He needed a plan.

He needed Gansey.

Ronan’s cell phone was in the pocket on the drivers-side door. He walked around the car and threw the door open, ignoring the incessant ringing of a vehicle that wanted its doors shut rather desperately, and swiped across the screen to unlock the phone.

Fourteen missed calls from Gansey. Shit.

Ronan swallowed hard and hit the button to call him back; his friend answered on the first ring. “Where the _fuck_ have you been, Lynch?” Gansey said immediately, his voice icy. It occurred to Ronan it was the first time he had heard the other boy say the word _fuck_. 

“We went—”

Gansey cut in before Ronan could string together a god damn sentence. “ _We_? Oh, so you’ve got Parrish with you. Good. Great. I don’t know what you two have been doing that’s _so_ important, but—”

It was Ronan’s turn to interrupt. “Gansey, man, I really need you to—”

“Do _not_ interrupt me right now, Lynch. I’m in no mood. I need you and Adam to get your asses to the county hospital _now_.”

Ronan blanched. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. The _hospital_? What the _fuck_ had he and Adam missed at Cheng’s goddamn toga party? “The hospital?” he managed to breathe out.

Gansey gave a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, the hospital.” He paused, as if to collect himself, and then said in a voice that was only slightly less than steady, “It’s Blue.”

 _Blue_. It had to be bad if Gansey was calling her by her real name.

“What—?” Ronan couldn’t even put the words into a sentence.

Gansey sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it like this. Just come to the hospital, I’ll explain it all when you get here.”

Ronan blinked his eyes closed, hard. He wanted — no, he _needed_ — Gansey’s advice on what the fuck to do about Adam, how to help him, if maybe _he_ should be at the hospital, too, but he couldn’t put anything more on Gansey’s shoulders. Not tonight, when he had missed over a dozen calls and Gansey was probably alone in a hospital waiting room worrying about Sargent. Ronan would not, _could not_ , put that on him as well.

“We’ll be there soon,” Ronan said, and he hung up.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What the _fuck_ was he supposed to do? Behind him, there was a strange shuffling noise. “Get back in the car,” he said tiredly, waving his hand in the general direction he supposed the Orphan Girl was misbehaving in.

“What the hell happened?” Adam’s groggy voice said by way of reply.

Ronan turned on his heel. “Parrish,” he hissed, feeling as if a weight had fallen from his shoulders. “Oh, thank fuck. Thank God you aren’t fucking dead.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, scratched absently at the back of his neck. “Did I pass out?” he asked, as if the answer weren’t glaringly obvious.

Ronan just nodded, unable to summon his usual sarcastic bite. “Yeah. Fuck. Are you okay? What the fuck?”

“I’m fine,” Adam reassured him, and his eyes did look normal again, Ronan noticed. “Guess that’s why you shouldn’t scry on an empty stomach.”

Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t eaten today, have you?”

“Yeah, I’m not having this conversation with you right now.”

“Just get in the damn car.”

Adam gave him a look as if to say _You could stand to be a little nicer to the guy who just nearly died in your arms_ , but he slid into the passenger seat anyway. The Orphan Girl had already situated herself in the backseat, furry legs pulled tight to her chest and wide eyes set unblinkingly on the woods. Ronan buckled himself in and peeled the Beemer out of the field.

“Thank you,” said Adam after a moment of silence. His voice was unconvincingly calm.

Ronan snorted. “For what?”

“For getting me out of there.” He could feel Adam’s eyes on him. “You saved my life.”

There were no other cars nearby and the road was straight, so Ronan allowed himself to look at Adam long and hard for a moment. “You saved mine first,” he said, dead serious. Adam swallowed.

Even after Ronan returned his gaze to the road, he could feel Adam staring at him, but it didn’t make him nervous. In fact, he noted hazily, he felt _safe_. Out loud, he said, “You’re getting some goddamn food before I drop you off.”

In the passenger seat, Adam sighed. “You’re going the wrong way for that,” he said simply, staring at the road ahead of them.

Ronan shifted uncomfortably. “Well, we, uh, we have a stop to make first.”

“A stop? Where?”

A long pause. “The hospital.”

Misunderstanding the situation, Adam exploded. “Oh, hell no, Lynch, you are _not_ taking me to the hospital right now. No. God, no. Turn around right now or I swear I’ll—”

“Shut up,” Ronan interjected, voice heatless. “It’s not for you, dipshit, it’s—” His throat caught, and the next words did not come.

They were both uncomfortably quiet.

“It’s?” Adam prompted after a moment, almost inaudible underneath the roar of the engine.

Ronan swallowed. “While you were… unconscious… Gansey called.”

The temperature dropped twenty degrees in the front seat. “And?” demanded Adam, frighteningly steady.

Ronan did not look away from the road. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet when he said, “I don’t know how bad it is, but. It’s Sargent.”

Nobody said another word for the rest of the drive.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked it!! it was a little rushed, so i don't feel it was my best work, but at least it was fun to write!! i love exploring their dynamic pre-relationship. anyway, feel free to come interact with me on tumblr, i'm @wespers :) p.s. title is from bulletproof heart by my chemical romance!


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